Description: As she contends with forces that threaten to uproot what she loves, the farm wife emerges as a prophetic voice from America's heartland, embracing a concept of community that includes the dead and the living, neighbors and strangers, cultivated fields, and ditches thick with milkweed.
Review Quotes:
"'Iva's tongue was honey-sweet and stung like a bee, ' the poet writes, an apt description of Wagner's own poetic gifts, on full display in The Farm Wife's Almanac. Rich in pathos and humor, this is a collection that embodies the culture from which it was birthed, a true celebration of living close to the land. As one of Wagner's farm wives says, 'I'd shun the plain, gray stones in Yoder Cemetery. Bury me in a root cellar, I'd say, with garlands of garlic and chili peppers, among gems of peach and plum and cherry.' And those bright canning jars, the soil's rich aroma, the fruit of the land captured and hidden in the dark of the cellar, mark Wagner's own particular vision, making this an almanac full of wisdom, forecasting a part of the agrarian world that is too quickly disappearing." --Todd Davis, Author, Native Species and Winterkill
"These poems are treasures unpacked and gleaming with quiet passion, humor, and wisdom. Wagner gently lifts the life of a farm wife into view, then dazzles the reader with insights that surprise and enlarge, drawing us into the history of both restriction and wonder, so that we too can imagine 'releasing the parachutes of milkweed' for the return of 'whirling monarchs so thick they block the sun.'" --Jean Janzen, Author, What the Body Knows
"The farm wife names children after beloved cows, plays rook, and wants to be buried in a root cellar. In poem after poem we see what might appear to be a sheltered, insular life in its true and astonishing expansiveness. These are poems of both intensity and calm beauty, transformative in their vision of the holiness in the everyday." --Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, Author, What Cannot Be Fixed; Poetry Editor, The Christian Century; Professor Emerita of English, Wheaton College